


Alter Ego

by BB_Roin



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics), Son of Batman (2014), Under the Red Hood, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Court of Owls, Dick Grayson is a Talon, F/M, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, Or Part of Him, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Personality Swap, really bad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-10 04:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15283239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BB_Roin/pseuds/BB_Roin
Summary: During a mission against the League of Shadows, Dick got himself thrown into the Lazarus Pit.He came out without a scratch, but something else might had been awoken by the accident.My version of Talon!Dick in YJ universe.Additional tags will be added.





	1. Wake Up Call

**Author's Note:**

> An AU where the Court starts training their Talon when Dick is still in the circus. Dick doesn't remember any of it because he is heavily drugged during those training. Then the Pit happens and the Talon part of him wakes up.
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](https://bb-roin.tumblr.com/) :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Someone was calling him._
> 
> The Pit happens, and someone(s) is really confused.

If it was Superboy, Kid Flash, or Aqualad, it would probably be fine.

But it was Robin. He did not have super strength or super speed, he was also light-weighted. So he could not simply take it or step aside, and even if he managed to block the attack, he was still sent flying by the brutal force.

And that was what's happening right now.

Robin had been expecting this, he had calculated his fall and had already regained his pose in the midair. It would still be fine if there wasn't another assassin. The assassin was previously engaged with Miss Martian. But when he noticed Boy Wonder was in trouble, he did not hesitate to try to take down Batman's protégé.

Robin managed to avoid the deadly strike once again. But this time, he could not control where he was going to land.

He only had time to hear KF's terrified shouting before the green consumed him.

 

***

 

Artemis immediately knew something was terribly wrong when a strong wave of panic ran through their mental link. She hurried to kick another damn ninja to unconsciousness before ran back to the team, just on time to hear and see the big neon green splash in the Lazarus Pit.

It took her another moment to understand what just happened, and at that moment Wally was already screaming at M'gann in an absolutely frightened voice asking her to lift Robin out of the Pit _now_.  

 _No, no, this is not happening._ She thought with a chill that resonated with the others' in her mind when everyone realized what the hell just happened.

She had heard about the Pits from time to time when she was still controlled by her father. Her father taught her all the miracles and disasters the Pits could do to a human being. And that old knowledge just dumped another bucket of ice to her heart.

_No, not Robin, not the youngest of us._

Robin was almost plugged out of the green water. She could tell M'gann wanted to do it as quick as possible and the gentle Martian could not afford to be gentle at the moment.

As the responsible leader, Kaldur blocked the rest of the enemies with Conner while the other members rushed to their fallen teammate. Robin did not respond to Wally's touch or M'gann's worried voice both from outside and inside. There was stiffness in his body, but it was hard to tell whether Robin was conscious or not with the mask shielding his eyes.

Wally was now ready to give a hard strike to wake up the bird. But before he could act, Robin moved.

 

* * *

 

Someone was calling him.

But it was different from the way master used to call him, nevertheless, it was not calling _him_. There was no rhyme, and he did not recognize either the name or the pattern, so he did not respond to it at first.

But the callings did not stop and instead of getting more and more intense, and for some reasons, he could not block them out. He was taught to ignore anyone's words besides his master's, but that function inside him was not working properly right now and he did not know why.

His master always reminded him in all kinds of ways that when you could not function properly you became useless to the Court and needed to be disposed of. Part of him felt afraid. This proved again that he was malfunctioning since a Talon shouldn't feel anything at all, let alone been afraid.

_"-come on Rob. Don't do this to me-"_

_"-I- I can't connect with his mind!"_

_"-League is coming-"_

Everything was wrong. First, he shouldn't have been woken up by anyone other than his master, then he should have been able to dismiss everything unrelated to his master and his duty, and most importantly he shouldn't be feeling _anything_. None of these was included in his prototype.

He had to check it. So he opened his eyes.

He only had a moment to take in the surroundings and people hovered over him before _everything_ hit him unprepared.

There were so many _knowledge_ and _memories_ and **_emotions_**. Everything rushed to his head like a flood of concretes and stones. And it _hurt_ , it hurt _so much_. He was trained to endure all kinds of physical pain, but whatever he was experiencing right now was coming from _inside_.

He couldn't help it. He violated his master's rules once again: he screamed.

Someone above was trying to hold him down. _Wally West, Kid Flash, **my** friend, **my** teammate-_ There were people shouting and crying beside him. _M'gann's cookies- Artemis Crock, **I** wish she can open up more- _ There were hands started touching him and dragging him. Why them couldn't just leave him alone. _This is not **aster** at all-_

This- this was too much. He had to get away before he fully lost his functions.

This time, he managed to force himself into slumber without the master's order.

 

* * *

 

It had been a long time since the last time Dick dreamed about the circus.

He usually only dreamed about his parents, and Zitka sometimes. He had dreams about others from his previous performing days too, but his parents were the only ones would always be in his dreams.

So he was a bit confused when he dreamed of Mr. Jackson this time, without his parents. Okay, he was not just a bit confused, he was baffled since he certainly did not interact with Mr. Jackson that much to dream about him years after.

His mom was not … let's just say she was not Mr. Jackson's biggest fan, for some reasons unknown. She never really voiced her dislike, but the way she acted whenever the knife thrower was near already spoke for itself.

And she was not the only one. For example, Candy (whose real name was Charlotte, but somehow everyone called her Candy) used to be the human target for the knife thrower. She rarely associated with her partner outside of the show. Dick once overheard her conversation with Mary Grayson, he remembered how she described the chilling she felt every time the man threw a knife at her like the man really wanted to impale her instead of hitting the broad she was tied to.

It might be a good thing that Mr. Jackson himself seemed to avoid the youngest Grayson whenever possible. Dick sometimes suspected his parents had something to do with it. A shame really, since Dick secretly wanted to know firsthand why people disliked the man. And the man definitely mastered his impalement arts to a professional level, picking up some tricks wouldn't have hurt either.

All in all, he didn't really know the man. So… why he was dreaming about throwing knives with Mr. Jackson after all these years?

He guessed the dreams worked in a weird way.


	2. Confusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The difficult thing was that they too wanted to tell the team what's wrong with their teammate. And that's where the problem came: they couldn't find anything wrong. The fact itself was, in fact, pretty wrong._
> 
>  
> 
> Someone just wanted to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the comments & kudos & subscribes, you can't image how happy I am!

The boy was sleeping right now, laying alone in that big bed which usually was only occupied by the adult leaguers, surrounded by monitors, looking painfully small and fragile.

At the moments like this, Clark couldn't help but doubt again that why on earth did they let such young children into their dangerous world.

But then again, it's already too late to let them quit.

It had been three days since Dick was brought to the med bay at Watchtower.

Yes, _Watchtower_. Clark was quite surprised when Bruce ordered the boy to be taken to here instead of his Batcave, which was out of the Bat's prototype since he always preferred healing himself in his secret base.

Then Clark understood: the man wanted _the best_ for Dick. They not only had the best medical equipment here (a must if you needed to treat various kinds of humans, metahumans, aliens, etc. on a daily basis), but it was also nearly impossible for anyone to sneak into a satellite unnoticed without using zeta-tube, whether it was a group of junior superheroes or the famous League of Assassins.

The latter was the main reason, but the former one wasn't so far-fetched either after Dinah reported constantly that the team kept demanding to be informed about Robin's condition, and was getting more and more frustrated when they got nothing. Dinah and Red Tornado were supervising them closely right now, just in case.

After all, they did have a Bio-Ship.

The difficult thing was that they too wanted to tell the team what's wrong with their teammate. And that's where the problem came: they couldn't find anything wrong. The fact itself was, in fact, pretty wrong.

Their knowledge of Lazarus Pit was quite limited, to say the least. They never dealt with it before. Batman seemed to be the only one who had enough understanding about it, which Clark had no doubt that it came from his complicated history with the assassin association. Ra's al Ghul had made sure that only he had access to it, so it was quite a shock that the team managed to get close to one during the mission. It didn't help that the man also preferred using the traditional way to preserve information, named hand-write copies, unreachable by the model techniques.

From what they knew, the Pit was said to rejuvenate the injured, resurrect the dead, and _kill the alive_. It was also mentioned that it could help the user regain their youth, but this one was never proved and merely a rumour.

And there were _side effects_. Insanity was just the most famous one.

But Dick was none of the cases.

For once, he was still alive, and not the dead-then-back-to-life kind of alive. The team presented at the scene confirmed that Robin was pushed into the Pit during a mid-fight, and he did not have any fatal injury at that time. So he wasn't resurrected. But if he wasn't, then how did he come out alive and… completely normal and unscratched?

Okay, not really completely normal, but still far from what they had expected for someone who had taken a dip in the Lazarus Pit.

Disorientation seemed to be the only thing he was suffering. Dick had more or less slept through three whole days, and when he woke up, he sometimes acted like he couldn't understand his surroundings, be in and out until he went back to sleep. The other times he woke up with enough conscious and appeared to be his usual self, just complained about dreams and headache (or head _agony_ , in Dick's own words). After taking a peak in his head, Martian Manhunter told them that Robin was also reliving all his past memories. All he saw was flying memory pieces. He believed that's the cause of his constant headache.

And that's it. That's all they could find. Dick should have already been released from the med bay if it had been another occasion.

It felt too easy and too lucky.

Which made everyone felt unsettled. Something felt amiss.

And anyone had met the Bat knew the man took no chance. He wasn't going to stop until he was absolutely sure that his son was okay.

He actually encouraged his co-workers to visit the teen hero, which was really, really, out of his usual character. Though the reason behind it was that he wanted as many people as possible to interact with his protégé and see if they could find something out of place. Which Clark thought was a little too desperate. Dick was the closest to him, and if the greatest detective himself couldn't spot anything wrong, he doubted anyone else could do it.

"Do you plan to just stalk me from there all day, or you actually wanna have a chat Supes?"

Superman looked up and saw the teen he considered as a nephew looked back at him with one eye open, an amused smile around the corner of his mouth.

Clark smiled back at the teen, flying closer to the boy.

He prayed everything turned out okay in the end.

 

* * *

 

It was easier for him to pretend to be Richard now.

At first, it was _torture_. They just kept _asking_. They kept asking questions he couldn't answer: _How do you feel? Anything wrong? What do you need?_

He couldn't answer any of them. You did not ask for a Talon's opinion, you only gave him orders, that was how thing should have been. His master never asked, and never let him ask. Asking and answering meant thinking, and a Talon did not think. A tool was a tool, after all.

When he didn't answer, the people- _Richard's friends, Richard's family_ \- asked more, and started touching him. He _hated_ to be touched, so he flinched away, which backfired terribly. They asked more and touched more and kind of set into a dead loop.

But then he realized that they were not asking about him, they were asking about _Richard_.

So he went through Richard's memories and tried to copy the way _Richard_ would have reacted. He started answering with things Richard had said before: _I'm fine. Don't worry. You guys are just worrying too much._

It didn't work out as well as he thought would have been. These answers just led to more questions and more demands for his own words. He also found out that just copying the saying wasn't enough, he had to imitate the feeling and physical actions when it was said, which was another thing he wanted to avoid.

In the end, he managed to find a solution in Richard's memory. Every time the date of John and Mary Grayson's deaths came, Richard would lie in bed at that night, closed his eyes and told Alfred Pennyworth or Batman that he was tired and wanted to sleep. The two would then leave him alone.

He tried it with the people who kept asking about Richard, and it worked.

Now he just had to pretend to be asleep, and wait for the slumber to claim him again.

Every time he felt his conscious was slipping away, he hoped he wouldn't wake up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A transition chapter, does not have much content but I feel it is a necessary one. Next time we will finally have some real plot. And I just realized that I put tags for bat bro too early... don't worry they would soon appear in the later chapters, just not so soon.  
> BTW, I kind of need a beta reader for this fic, so if anyone is interested, feel free to tell me! You can find me on [tumblr](https://bb-roin.tumblr.com/), bb-roin.  
> Thanks for reading. Have a nice day!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](https://bb-roin.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
